


Can't You Make the Time Go Faster?

by Stormregard



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: And mollymauk is a dangerous crush to have, Because the other has chosen to ignore events that suggest otherwise, Caleb Widogast Deserves Nice Things, Dancing, Drinking, First Kiss, Fluff and Angst, Genderfluid Mollymauk Tealeaf, Horisal, M/M, Mollymauk Tealeaf Lives, Mollymauk is alive and well, Mutual Pining, New Beginnings, New Dawn Festival, Tails, Tieflings, and a hint of a kink to come
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-27
Updated: 2019-12-27
Packaged: 2021-02-18 08:48:33
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,271
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21991444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Stormregard/pseuds/Stormregard
Summary: It is New Dawn and Caleb is determined to act the part of a Supportive Friend and Adventurer who Definitely Likes Parties. Mollymauk, of course, is doing no acting. That means that the inevitable truths are as follows; Caleb is obsessed, everyone else is drunk, and Molly is an attention whore who knows better than most what it takes to make Caleb remember how to dance.
Relationships: Mollymauk Tealeaf/Caleb Widogast
Comments: 5
Kudos: 112





	Can't You Make the Time Go Faster?

Caleb had finally grown used to the way the Mighty Nein did pubs. He almost liked them these days. Mostly. Usually.

In his former life, when he had just been _Caleb and Nott_ , the pub had been a luxury he hadn't often allowed. It was money they didn't need to spend to drink in a tavern, with their upscale seating justifying the tap fees. Even the seediest would require an extra silver on the most disgusting of ales, just for serving them indoors.

At least then, he'd been left alone. They'd sit in a corner and have their drink and talk only to themselves.

Lots of the times, he supposed, his new family did that, too; quietly settled into an unassuming corner and could manage to be left alone until either Jester or Nott or sometimes Beau would get them into a tangle or a new job they couldn't afford to take, and things would become interesting.

But Caleb liked interesting.

Interesting things were easier to focus on, and for longer. There was less of a chance of his brain getting away from him, of it falling down the pit of doom and despair that it often tried to drag him into. 

The point was that this was New Dawn’s Eve, in some random tavern in who knows where (Caleb knew where, of course, but he was working hard on pretending he didn’t care about such things if the others didn’t). He was happy, he was calm, he was carefree. He was repeating this to himself as he drank spice-warmed ale and ate butter cookies. Maybe, if he repeated it often enough, he’d believe himself. Maybe if he repeated it often enough, the others would believe it too. If he kept this grin pasted on and his cup in hand, he’d even convince Mollymauk. 

Caleb’s eyes, as they often did these days, were tracking the beautiful purple tiefling as he spun around the room. When they’d arrived, the band in the corner had been playing a quiet waltz; this was an upscale sort of place, with table linens and candlesticks, and the patrons had been respectfully drinking and listening and celebrating in a subdued sort of way. But now, with Molly and Jester and Nott on the scene, things had become just the most tasteful of levels more exuberant. 

The band had started playing a merry jig sometime ago (around the time of Caleb’s second ale, but he was starting to lose track of that fact). Molly had coerced multiple tables to shift so a dance floor could be created. Since then, he’d been whirling many a middle-aged woman into dances where they giggled and skipped like school children as his long, jewel adorned chains chimed and jingle on his horns. They were trimmed for the holidays, tiny suns and moons and stars holding the universe between his ear and the peacock that caressed his neck always. He wore a gold shirt, open practically to his waist; his purple coat sat beside Caleb, in fact, thrown off in the middle of a wild spin that brought him past the table with a cheeky grin that made Caleb’s face heat uncomfortably. 

“How are you, my star?” Jester suddenly said, immediately in his ear. He turned to find her standing on a chair. Why she was standing on the chair rather than just sitting next to him was a Jester-fuelled secret and he put little thought into it.  
  
He grinned, nodded at her, held up his tankard. “ _Gut, Liebling._ I am good. You have been dancing?”  
  
“And you haven't!” she cried, taking his ale from his hand and drinking deeply. She took the cup and jumped down from the chair, waltzing her way in time to the music to the bar. He hoped she was bringing more back with her. His hands felt uncomfortably empty without the handle to fiddle with. 

“You should just go dance with him,” Nott said gently. He was startled to find her awake. Her head had been nodding in her booth seat across from him for half an hour.  
  
“I do not dance,” he answered.  
  
“That,” she said sternly, “is not true. We both know that. He knows you’re watching him. Might as well go dance.”  
  
Caleb was alarmed. “You think he knows I’m…”  
  
“ _Please_ ,” Nott groaned. “It’s his entire reason for existing, being watched and fawned over. Of course he knows you’re watching him. Now, if you’ll excuse me for a moment, I have an appointment with the alley.”  
  
She stood on unsteady feet, and it was then that Caleb remembered she had likely been drinking for most of the day.

“Love you,” she said, placing a kiss on his elbow, the highest point she could reach from her floor vantage point. 

“Love you too, come back soon,” he insisted. She smiled and walked away.

As the events of the morning came flooding back to him, he felt a wave of weariness wash over him. With no one close enough now to stop him from wallowing, he let his body fall into a bit of a slump, his head hitting the back of the booth. His eyes closed against his will and were closed when he was suddenly accosted with the weight of a familiar head. 

“Asleep already, Lovely? I certainly hope not. You owe me a dance.”  
  
Molly’s voice was low and insistent. And slightly out of breath. One hour of dancing, he supposed, would test the lungs of any human. Or devil. Or whatever. Caleb opened his eyes and shook his head.  
  
“I do not dance,” Caleb replied. 

“Everyone dances when they have the right partner.”  
  
Caleb swallowed hard and did not reply.  
  
“You don’t mind, do you, Darling?” Mollymauk continued, leaning harder on Caleb’s shoulder and drawing his knees up onto the bench beside them. “Just need a quick rest, and you’re very comfy.”  
  
“ _Es ist okay, ya_ ,” Caleb whispered.  
  
“You’re empty-handed,” Molly observed.  
  
“Jester took my cup.”  
  
“Ah,” he teased. “Good girl.”

They sat in silence for a moment. Companionable silence, Caleb supposed. It didn’t feel weighted or awkward. He knew he had not caused this silence, at least, which made it easier to enjoy. He did realise how hot this room was, how full of sound. But, he assumed, those things were just his ever-heightened senses after a battle. He needed a good night’s rest.  
  
“I am tired,” Caleb said.  
  
At the exact same moment, Molly sat upright and was holding out a hand when he said, “Caleb?”  
  
“Mollymauk,” he answered, protesting.  
  
Molly’s red eyes glinted, and he grinned lasciviously as his tail flicked out from behind him and hovered near Caleb’s ear, moving as though it would like to caress his cheek. Caleb gulped. 

The smile had long since stopped impacting him. He used it on everyone and it meant nothing. It had definitely taken months to figure that out, to stop having to hold his breath when it happened to calm his heart and his cock before they both embarrassed him further.

The more recent thing he’d discovered, however, was that Mollymauk’s tail was a more reliable tell than his face. His _tail,_ he only seemed to be partially in control of. It would shift towards what Molly truly desired, act the way he truly felt; there were times during negotiation that Caleb had noticed this anger the tiefling. He could understand why. A man so adept at deceit, subterfuge, charm _would_ be frustrated by something that could give him away. But Caleb — who was unnaturally good at finding people’s tells (even if he then could rarely use them to his benefit) — thought it was only fair. A man so good at lying should have something that gave him away. 

And so, it was Molly’s _tail_ that convinced him to stand, to move toward the make-shift dance floor holding Mollymauk’s hand in his own and hoping to god he wasn’t about to give himself away. The music shifted as they approached, slowing down to the waltz they’d been playing when they came in. 

Caleb hesitated.

“ _Verdammit._ Can’t you ask them to go back to the jig?” he muttered to Molly, who had paused with him.

Molly laughed and swung them together until Caleb’s hand was held aloft and Molly’s other arm was around his waist. 

“I guess I could, but it would be an awful waste of the ten gold I paid them to slow the music back down the second they saw me with you.” 

He grinned again, but the smile shifted slowly into something almost resembling doubt. From this angle, Caleb could see that he had put that sparkled powder across his lidless eyes, the brow-ridges shining pink. His purple cheeks looked velvety beneath a dark, charcoal makeup that barely tinted it. Caleb’s breath caught and Molly’s eyes shifted across his face, questioning him and begging him at the same time.

Caleb, obviously, was incapable of refusal. He gripped Molly’s hand again, put his hand at his dance partner’s waist, and nodded once, averting his gaze from Mollymauk’s intense, red-eyed stare, burning its place into his soul. 

“It’s just a dance, love. It doesn’t have to mean anything,” Molly whispered as Caleb took the lead. 

The steps were rusty, they came back to him one piece at a time, but it was a muscle memory that was well-worn and before long, Caleb had them moving smooth and graceful across a quickly emptying dance floor. With room available, Caleb took the arc wider, adding flourishes as he remembered them and gripping Molly tightly as he hung on for a ride he’d been unprepared for. When Caleb snuck a peek at his face, he found it transfixed, held firmly on Caleb’s eyes, lips parted in shock. Caleb’s step faltered a moment and he forced himself to look away. 

The music wound down, and Caleb ended their steps with a small, traditional bow, Molly’s smooth, velvet-textured hand held lightly in his own as he bestowed a single kiss. The room around them exploded in whoops and applause and Caleb belatedly realised they had ended up the only ones on the floor. Amidst the cheering, he could hear the voices of his newfound family, Nott loudest of all.

He stood from his bow and stepped up to Mollymauk, close and crowding him. In classic fashion, he did not back down but held his ground. When Caleb exhaled, the words he’d been trying not to say for weeks, for a month, came tumbling from his mouth.  
  
“Everything, Mollymauk Tealeaf,” he whispered, “has _meaning_. Thank you for the dance, _Liebe_.”  
  
He stepped back and turned quickly away, taking only three and a half steps to get himself out of the pub and into the cold night air of Horisal. The light disappeared with the closing door and the panic rose in him as he was covered again with silence and darkness. For a brief moment, he let it sit there; the loss of breath, the fuzzy burst of energy that stole his sight, the shaking in his hands as he buried his face in them. Then, he took a deep breath and forced himself to calm down. 

“They taught you how to dance, didn’t they? Before?”  
  
Caleb whirled around. He hadn’t heard Mollymauk come outside, hadn’t seen the light change from the door. _Gutt_ , maybe he could walk through walls. Who even knew. 

“I had a very expensive education,” he replied tersely.  
  
“You tell us nothing. I don’t know how we are to protect you if you—”  
  
“I didn’t ask for anyone’s protection,” He hissed. His accent was thick. It came out heavily when he spoke Common while upset, while remembering. It was his third language. The sounds did not come naturally.  
  
“Is it easier to explain it to me in Zemnian?”  
  
“You don’t speak Zemnian.”  
  
“I don’t need the words, sweet boy. Just the feelings. I can feel the feelings in my sleep.”  
  
“Why would I tell you anything?” Caleb seethed. “You survive on half-truths and hidden meaning. You treat everyone as stepping stones to get you what you want, with no regard for anyone else’s desires or—”  
  
Caleb’s anger was cut off by Mollymauk’s approach. By his lips burying themselves in his own. Caleb did not resist, hadn’t had the energy to resist in almost a year. But Molly pulled back, groaned nearly silently as his forked tongue chased the edge of Caleb’s lips. 

“You know nothing, Caleb Widowgast, of my desires.” 

Caleb’s arms moved by themselves. He pulled Mollymauk in, dragging him by the back of his golden shirt; his jacket was inside still, sitting on that bench. His coat of many colours, many magics. Many hidden secrets. His chest was open to the air.  
  
“You must be freezing,” Caleb whispered, leaning into Molly’s ear, brushing his forehead against the tip of his horns. “You must be cold or your tail would be up here,” he continued, reaching for Molly’s other cheek and brushing a finger across it.  
  
Mollymauk said nothing, but Caleb could feel him react, felt the shudder and the gasp, without even hearing them.  
  
“Yes, I know far more about your desires than you would like,” Caleb confirmed for him. “You really must learn to get that thing under control. It gives you away.”  
  
Mollymauk growled and moved his head to scrape his teeth down Caleb’s jaw. “Are _you_ cold?” he growled.  
  
He shivered, belying his next assertion. “Not so much.” 

“Good,” Molly murmured, dragging them even closer together until his chest was warm against Caleb’s thin dress shirt. “We can stay out here a little longer, then.” 


End file.
